Abuse Of Power

INTRODUCTION

THE TAPES OF

RICHARD NIXON

The tapes of Richard Nixon’s conversations with political intimates compel our attention as do few other presidential documents. Since we first learned of their existence in July 1973, the tapes have fascinated the American public. During Nixon’s Watergate crisis, the nagging question centered on what the President knew about the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in June 1972 and the subsequent cover-up of White House involvement. The revelation that he had recorded his conversations made clear that this question could be answered—if the tapes were made public.

When Richard Nixon assumed the presidency in January 1969, he ordered Lyndon B. Johnson’s recording system dismantled immediately. In February 1971, however, Nixon and his Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman, re-installed the system with substantial improvements, including voice-activated devices. For a long while, knowledge of its existence was confined to the President, Haldeman, and a Haldeman aide, Alexander Butterfield. Three, later four, Secret Service agents who serviced the system knew about it, but apparently not the Director of the Secret Service Presidential Protective Division. The system later was expanded beyond the Oval Office to include the President’s hideaway office in the Executive Office Building, Camp David, the Cabinet Room, and White House and Camp David telephones.

The Watergate story reached an entirely new level on July 16, 1973, when Butterfield acknowledged to the Senate Select Committee that there is tape in the Oval Office. Everything was taped, he said. [T]he President is very history-oriented and history-conscious about the role he is going to play, and is not at all subtle about it, or about admitting it. Reaction ranged from amazement to indignation to titillation. Senator Howard Baker’s query, What did the President know, and when did he know it? could finally, apparently, be conclusively answered. Yet the fight that ensued over access lasted far longer than anyone imagined at the time. Only now can we return to Baker’s question. The answer is conclusive: the President knew virtually everything about Watergate and the imposition of a cover-up, from the beginning. The new tapes painstakingly reveal his repeated maneuvers to deny that knowledge for more than a year and, in turn, tell us much about the man. Along the way, he has given the best, most authoritative account of his involvement in Watergate we are likely to get.

When the first tapes of less than forty hours were released in April 1974, they provided a rough outline of Nixon’s abuse of power and obstruction of justice—the principal charges for his proposed impeachment. The charges made his position untenable and forced his resignation in August 1974, less than two years after his magnificent re-election. The tapes mortally wounded Nixon’s presidency and sent many of his associates to jail.

We knew in 1974 that Nixon’s archives contained a great deal more material, and after Nixon’s resignation, the remaining tapes became an important prize for the historical assessment of his administration. Nixon himself launched a twenty-year campaign, determined to impress his own interpretation on that record. He wrote numerous books and articles, made carefully staged public appearances and, in general, sought to establish himself as an elder statesman, both in the United States and abroad.

As part of that campaign, Nixon fought ferociously to gain control over the remaining tapes. He struggled so intensely, with such determination, because of his fear that the secret tapes would cripple his hopes for historical rehabilitation. In April 1996, twenty-two years after Congress had legislated the release of the tapes of Richard Nixon’s presidential conversations at the earliest reasonable date, nineteen years after the Supreme Court had upheld that law, nine years after the National Archives completed its processing and preparations for their public release, two years after Nixon’s death, and after five years of litigation and mediation, the tapes were at last liberated from their archival purgatory.

As the result of a lawsuit brought by Public Citizen and myself, a binding agreement struck with the National Archives and the Nixon Estate, which provided that over a four-year period more than 3,700 hours of Nixon presidential tapes, tapes whose release Nixon had forcefully resisted to the end of his life, would at last be available to the public. The first segment, consisting of 201 hours, released in November 1996, centers on Watergate, and in edited form comprises the material in this volume. Conversations begin in June 1971, covering the President’s reaction to the publication of the Pentagon Papers, and end in July 1973, during the height of the Senate Select Committee’s hearings, when knowledge of the taping system became public. The title, Abuse of Power, stems from a congressional mandate. The 1974 Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservations Act required the Archivist of the United States to provide the public with the full truth, at the earliest reasonable date, of the abuse of governmental power popularly identified under the generic term ‘Watergate.’

The early tapes had provided a brief glimpse into the character and quality of political morality and discourse in the Nixon White House. Before their release, the President had labored desperately to delete references to Jesus Christ, and changed Goddamn to damn. Nonetheless, the President’s congressional allies, his friends, and friendly columnists were appalled. Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott called them shabby, disgusting, and immoral; even Vice President Gerald Ford found them a little disappointing. William Safire, a longtime Nixon aide and by then a New York Times columnist, thought the conversations revealed a man guilty of conduct unbecoming a President. The Rev. Billy Graham, a faithful supporter, could not but deplore the moral tone implied, and was dismayed that situational ethics had infected the White House.

The new tapes amplify the crudities of thought and language of the first group. But they also more sharply reveal a President deeply and intimately involved in sometimes criminal abuses of power, both before and after the Watergate break-in. In 1974, the President’s defenders in Congress demanded specificity—clearly documented examples—of presidential abuse of power and obstruction of justice. Their spirited efforts for Nixon did not carry the day, but they made an enormous, momentary impression. On August 5, however, the President, complying with the Supreme Court’s order in United States v. Nixon, released transcripts of the smoking gun conversations of June 23, 1972, in which he and Haldeman talked about using the CIA to thwart the FBI investigation of the Watergate break-in. That revelation dissolved the President’s remaining support and made his resignation both imperative and inevitable.

These new materials provide a massive, overwhelming record of Nixon’s involvement and his instigation of obstruction of justice and abuse of power. They expose a level of culpability far greater than imagined twenty-five years ago. President Nixon knew from the outset that the investigation had to be contained to protect White House secrets—or horrors, as Attorney General John Mitchell labeled them. Accordingly, he talked for more than a year about what he had done, and continued to do, as he instigated, in effect, a cover-up of the cover-up. Specificity is no longer lacking.

The year of events following the Watergate break-in is at the heart of this story. Prophetically, at the outset, Nixon and Haldeman discussed their special secret—the taping system—on June 20, 1972. The President thought that it complicates things all over. Haldeman replied: They say it’s extremely good. I haven’t listened to the tapes. And Nixon quietly said: They’re kept for future purposes.

The arrest of E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA operative, following the Watergate break-in, filled Nixon with foreboding. On June 22, 1972, Haldeman told Nixon that Hunt, who had been involved in the Watergate break-in, is in the process of disappearing. The next day, Nixon remarked that Hunt had done a lot of things. Meanwhile, the first cover-up appears at the same time when Nixon learned of an attempt to pin it all on G. Gordon Liddy (Is Liddy willing? Nixon queried). A year later (April 10), Nixon worried that Hunt would expose an earlier venture—meaning the Plumbers and their illegal activities. Typically, such insights alternated with the President’s remarks about the comic opera and stupid overtones of the caper, as he called it. Haldeman warned him of the various lines of interlinkage in the whole damn business (June 26, 1972), obviously referring to past White House activities that had involved such men as Hunt. But from the outset, Nixon recognized the problem of, and the difficulty of maintaining, a cover-up. On June 29, 1972, he told Haldeman, It’s a time bomb; the next day, he said: You can’t cover this thing up, Bob. The next month (July 19), he invoked memories of the Alger Hiss case (a favorite theme): If you cover up, you’re going to get caught. That day, too, Nixon and Ehrlichman discussed whether Magruder could take responsibility. The President was now involved in the specifics of testimony (July 19: Can’t he [Magruder] state it just a little different?). He still hoped to keep Mitchell free from blame. Yet one by one, each such firewall would be breached in the coming year. By May 29, 1973, thoroughly exasperated, Nixon would claim that the cover-up, the whole Goddamn thing, frankly, was done because it involved Mitchell.

Nixon knew of the cover-up from the start, as we well know from the famous smoking gun conversations of June 23, 1972. But he kept himself informed on the subject throughout the summer. He knew, despite later protestations of his ignorance of John Dean and his role, what his young counsel had been doing. Haldeman told him on July 20, 1972: John Dean is watching it on an almost full-time basis and reporting to Ehrlichman and me on a continuing basis. . . . There’s no one else in the White House that has any knowledge of what’s going on there at all. That very day, Haldeman assured Nixon that the Department of Justice investigation was going along the channels that will not produce the kind of answers we don’t want produced. On obstruction of justice, the verdict of the tapes is clear.

Nixon often expressed admiration for Dean. Less than three weeks before Dean’s famous March 21, 1973, cancer on the presidency discussion with Nixon, the President said: Hell, I’m convinced that Dean is a pretty good gem. . . . [H]e’s awfully smart. . . . [H]e thinks things through and all that. He’s not cocky (March 2, 1973). He told Dean on March 16 that the problem is the cover-up. Still, it was necessary because there’s a hell of a lot of other crap going to hit (April 28, 1973). A week after the March 21 meeting, Nixon said that Dean has been a hero. Yet by April 25, the President told Attorney General Richard Kleindienst that Dean had ordered the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office.

Nixon always denied that he knew of hush money payments until Dean told him in March. But these tapes give the lie to what Nixon called a myth. On August 1, 1972, Haldeman reported that Hunt’s happy. At considerable cost, the President said. But hastily added: It’s worth it, . . . [t]hey have to be paid. That’s all there is to that. On January 3, 1973, Haldeman told Nixon: Liddy we’re taking care of in one way. We’ve got to be very careful to take care of [Jeb] Magruder the right way, in the other way. After Dean left the March 21 meeting, the President told his longtime, faithful secretary Rose Mary Woods that he may have a need for substantial cash for a personal purpose,—a campaign thing, he added. Again, before the March 21 meeting, Nixon acknowledged that his good friend, prominent Republican fundraiser Thomas Pappas has raised the money. Haldeman responded by noting Pappas’s great virtue: And he’s able to deal in cash . . . (March 2, 1973). A few days later, on March 7, Nixon personally thanked Pappas for helping out on some of these things that . . . others are involved in.

The climax of these tapes occurs with the conversations that led to the firing of Haldeman and Ehrlichman on April 30, 1973. On March 27, Haldeman had warned Nixon: You fire everybody now, you send them to jail. Ehrlichman, meanwhile, continued to scheme to have John Mitchell take the fall for everyone regarding the break-in, while the cover-up would remain secret (April 14, 1973). Dismissing his aides was agonizing for Nixon. But on April 12, he had set his course: We’ve got to think the unthinkable sometimes. After he dismissed his aides, the President’s conversations on the night of April 30 are emotional, distraught, poignant, and sprinkled with his slurred words. I love you, he tells Haldeman. A few days earlier, he told Ziegler: It’s all over, do you know that?

The departure of Haldeman set the stage for the emergence of General Alexander Haig as Chief of Staff. Documentation for Haig’s activities is hard to come by, as most of his papers remain closed in the Library of Congress (along with Henry Kissinger’s). But the new tapes reveal much about the man and his role. The conversations of May 8–9 are classic expressions of bureaucratic maneuvering, as Haig consolidated his position, established control over the President’s legal defense, excluded White House counsel Leonard Garment from effective access, and eased Haldeman away from the President. For Haig, the stakes are old-fashioned: Watergate, he tells Nixon on May 11, involves good, strong Americanism versus left-wing sabotage. He knew how to exploit Nixon’s cynicism. He wanted former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg as Special Prosecutor because he is obnoxious and doesn’t wear well with the people, which would be good for our point of view (May 12, 1973). Near the end (July 12, 1973), Haig expressed his frustration with Watergate: It’s just like Vietnam, a strange place.

Nixon’s jarring language about Jews recurs throughout the tapes. "Bob, please get me the names of the Jews, you know, the big Jewish contributors of the Democrats. . . . Could we please investigate some of the cocksuckers? he told Haldeman on September 13, 1971. The next year, on October 20, he criticized a reporter and an FBI executive: [T]hey’re both Jews and that has nothing to do with it, but it at least gives you a feeling of the possible motivation deep down of the liberal leftists. An anti-Semite? Perhaps; though many of his admirers quickly retort that such expressions never were operational, that nothing resulted from them. And, it is noted, some key Administration players were Jewish. Nixon also regularly belittled Harvard men, yet he was quick to have them in his Administration. Probably, what was at work here was that corrosive cynicism that pervaded Nixon’s remarks—similar to his cynical exploitation of an opponent’s endorsement of school busing while his Administration compiled an enviable record on school desegregation in the South, or when he boasted to Charles Colson on June 13, 1973, that the blacks don’t like" his choice for Director of the FBI, Clarence Kelley.

Nixon reminds us of his earlier history, with references to his role in the Hiss case and the firing of Sherman Adams, Dwight Eisenhower’s chief of staff. He suggested reviving the virtually moribund House Committee on Un-American Activities following the Pentagon Papers incident. The Committee, he said on July 2, 1971, could investigate a spy ring, believing it could re-create the circus atmosphere of twenty years earlier. "[W]hat a marvelous opportunity for the committee. . . . [Y]ou know what’s going to charge up an audience. Jesus Christ, they’ll be hanging from the rafters. . . . Going after all these Jews. Just find one that is a Jew, will you. . . . Comforting old thoughts never were too far behind. On March 29, 1973, Nixon defended his use of the Plumbers, a group engaged in illegal operations, ostensibly to thwart leaks. This is national security. . . . We’ve got all sorts of activities because we’ve been trying to run this town by avoiding the Jews in the government because there were very serious questions [of leaks]."

The President needed his demons, his enemies, in more familiar White House terms. First, there was Daniel Ellsberg, who had leaked the Pentagon Papers to major newspapers. Try him in the press, Nixon told an aide on June 30, 1971. We want to destroy him in the press. A few days earlier, on June 24, however, Nixon expressed a sneaking admiration for Ellsberg, wanting his own Ellsberg, an Ellsberg who’s on our side; in other words, an intellectual who knows the history of the times, who knows what he’s looking for. Specifically, Nixon wanted a man to study records of past presidents and foreign affairs to reveal their shortcomings and failures.

The fact that the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers only fueled Nixon’s anger. On July 1, 1971, after the Supreme Court allowed the newspaper to continue publication, Nixon the conspiracist responded: "Do you think, for Christ sakes, that the New York Times is worried about all the legal niceties? Those sons of bitches are killing me. . . . We’re up against an enemy, a conspiracy. They’re using any means. We are going to use any means. Is that clear? That same day, he attacked the media in general. We want somebody to be a [Joseph] McCarthy. . . . Is there another [Bob] Dole? Then: [T]he press now is putting their right to make money, to profit, to profit from publication of stolen documents under the First Amendment and that that overrides the right of an American who is fighting for his country. . . . [G]et into some of this material. Hit it and keep hitting and ream them and [send] letters to [the] editor embarrassing, you know, Senator[s]-elect. . . . I know how this game is played."

The creation and use of the Plumbers is, of course, at the center of abuse-of-power charges against the President. Shortly after the group broke into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office in Los Angeles, Ehrlichman told the President on September 8, 1971: We had one more little operation. It’s been aborted out in Los Angeles which, I think, is better that you don’t know about. But we’ve got some dirty tricks underway. . . . We’ve planted a bunch of stuff with columnists, some of which will be given to service shortly . . . about Ellsberg’s lawyer, about the Bay of Pigs. Nixon always rationalized the break-in as a justifiable national security operation. His aide, Charles Colson, put his own gloss on such thinking, saying, They weren’t stealing anything, . . . they had broken and entered with an intent not to steal, [only] with an intent to obtain information (July 19, 1972).

At the end, the conversations take on a funny, sad character when, for example, the President’s friend Bebe Rebozo told the President about a supportive letter from the ex-Mayor of Jersey City, then a guest of the federal government at Leavenworth (June 12, 1973). (At the end, Nixon seemed comfortable only with Rebozo, Rose Mary Woods, and possibly Press Secretary Ron Ziegler.) Or Henry Kissinger solemnly reporting to the President that he now had the support of author Norman Mailer (July 12, 1973). Nixon assured his daughter (June 19, 1973) that Dean had nothing. He merely was the carry-outer of this thing. Finally, and fittingly, in the last conversation here, Nixon urged Kissinger to keep on fighting.

Altogether, we have a richer, more informed portrait of the only man to have resigned the presidency. The new tapes offer the best opportunity to view the inner man, to capture him in different facets and moods—a man alternately resourceful and inept, exhilarated and depressed, combative and passive, prosaic and articulate, repetitive and informed, self-centered and empathetic, sometimes sad yet often comical. We have no known record of such unguarded and frank talk by any other president.

These conversations provide a rare glimpse of a president uninhibited by the restraints of public appearance, and capture him in moments alone with trusted confidants. Here, we have both exceptional candor and a practiced level of deceit; the display of a constant calculus of political considerations; the exhibit of raw, human emotions; and, above all, the revelations of extraordinary, illegal, seemingly unprecedented presidential behavior and power. These tapes are the bedrock in laying bare the mind and thoughts of Richard Nixon. They constitute a record of unassailable, historical documentation he cannot escape. There is nothing quite like them.

The Nixon tapes are, however, far from the whole of the record of the Nixon presidency. The National Archives and other depositories hold countless public and private documents essential to an understanding of Nixon’s administration. Memoranda between Nixon and his top aides during the first two years of his presidency are basic for understanding the nature of his presidency, as well as for extraordinary insights into his motivation and behavior. But the Nixon tapes uniquely reveal the President’s voice and perspective on extraordinary events. Other presidents taped conversations, but did so selectively, at their own initiative. Those tapes often seem contrived, even staged, and have had relatively little impact in shaping our knowledge or understanding of these men. The tapes of FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson offer little prospect of similar importance. The Nixon tapes, on the other hand, are central to his history and his presidency.

Richard Nixon was a very complicated man. Essentially a loner, he was at the same time the most public of public men. Few leaders have eagerly exposed themselves to such scrutiny as did Richard Nixon. His countless appearances, through almost five decades on the public stage, and numerous writings, gave him extraordinary visibility, with all the inherent advantages—and risks. Whether it was the perspiration on his upper lip that betrayed his innate uneasiness with us, the maudlin sentimentality he invoked in his Checkers speech, the pride he displayed at his daughter’s wedding, the unbounded joy of his triumphs, and the unspeakable burden of his dramatic defeats—this man exposed his multifaceted humanity in extraordinary, vivid ways. As he left the White House in August 1974, he recalled that he had been in the highest mountains and deepest valleys; he had known triumph and failure, with all of their accompanying exhilaration and exquisite pain.

These conversations reflect Nixon’s most painful, difficult political and personal moments. He occasionally reveals the true extent of his and his aides’ involvement in Watergate. He knows his vulnerability, he fears exposure, and he realizes that resignation is a very real possibility for at least a year prior to that event. A man of secrets, Nixon ironically revealed more about himself than any president before or since.

The conversations between the President, his closest aides, and occasional other visitors, like other conversations, often have a prosaic quality and, at times, are terribly repetitive. No doubt, too, some were contrived, since the taping system gave Nixon and his aides a chance to speak to posterity or to make a record of their own. In a May 10, 1973, conversation, for example, Haldeman told the President that they never met Dean in the famous September 15, 1972, meeting, and they strain to put their own interpretation on Nixon’s meeting with Dean on March 21. Yet, at other times, recorded revelations contradict their public story and offer irrefutable evidence of impeachable instances of abuse of power and obstruction of justice.

Here we have essential material that adds more details, more texture, to the portrait of the nation’s 37th president. Nixon’s scheming, lying, and worrying about what truths might be discovered or what must be covered up, is at the heart of these tapes. Some of the sound bites may be misleading. They must be understood in context; we must make allowance for hyperbole and distortion, even a lack of seriousness or an occasional light moment. Was Nixon, for example, really serious about having his men burglarize Republican headquarters and blame the Democrats? More importantly, from these conversations, an ongoing narrative emerges, between Richard Nixon and his closest aides, of the Watergate crisis as viewed from their perspective. Now, from a vantage point a quarter-century later, we can watch unfold the drama that engulfed, and then destroyed, the Nixon presidency, always through the focus of the man who insured his own self-destruction.

Read as narrative, these conversations have various themes and subjects. Long before the Watergate break-in, they reveal President Nixon’s insatiable desire for more information, more intelligence, about his political foes. Nixon’s interest in Democratic National Chairman Lawrence O’Brien, whether it was about his income taxes or his political activities, bears some comparison to Henry II’s alleged grumbling about that accursed priest, Thomas Beckett. We learn from these tapes more about the cover-up than was revealed in the famous smoking gun conversations of June 23, 1972. In particular, we have a much better understanding of the need for a cover-up to protect previous illegal White House activities, most notably the work of the Plumbers. (Nixon had created the Plumbers just after the Pentagon Papers incident. The group, ostensibly designed to stop leaks, focused instead on surreptitious attacks on White House political opponents and anti-war figures.) Even comparatively minor White House peccadilloes had to be protected. John Ehrlichman told the President on March 16, 1973, that we’re not going to get the benefit of the doubt and it’s going to make for juicy reading—[that we kept] track of a United States Senator [Edward Kennedy] in his off hours for nine months. And we learn much more than ever before about the care with which the cover-up was managed for another year. These transcripts vividly instruct us in how the President and his men manipulated and fought any investigation of their wrongdoing.

Throughout these conversations, Richard Nixon repeatedly describes the Watergate break-in as stupid (when he wasn’t excusing it as a minuscule crime unless you get something, or saying that breaking into Democratic headquarters is no blot on a man’s record). All the more reason, then, to consider what may be the most fundamental question of all: if the break-in was stupid, if the Nixon campaign had such loyal soldiers as the Cuban burglars, Liddy, and Hunt, who were prepared to fall on their swords for the President (while being very well-compensated for such dedication, of course), then why not sacrifice them? Whether they pled guilty or sought a trial, the affair probably would have ended with their convictions, and Watergate might well have been consigned to the ashcan of history as merely a third-rate burglary.

The decision to cover up now seems inevitable, even logical, considering the Administration’s stake in the matter. But there was more at stake than insulating the President from the White House horrors. Nixon had carefully nourished an image through a quarter-century of public life as an upstanding law-and-order advocate. Maintaining that image required distance from what he knew of past activities, as well as what he knew of the cover-up.

While John Dean still was his loyal lieutenant for the cover-up, the President told him on March 16, 1973: You’ve got always to think in terms of the presidency and the President should not appear to be hiding and not be forthcoming. Do you know what I mean? . . . The problem is the cover-up, not the facts. . . . But you cannot have the President take the rap on a cover-up. At the outset, Nixon perceptively warned Haldeman that they could not cover this thing up, Bob; nine months later, perception turned to pessimism as Nixon sensed the futility of maintaining the cover-up. Perhaps it was a losing game, Haldeman suggested; that’s sort of my feeling, the President replied.

By May 1973, Nixon realized his presidency had suffered a devastating blow; worse yet, he knew he might have to resign or be impeached. The facts were there, waiting only to be uncovered by proper investigative authorities. Under mounting pressure, he recognized it was only a matter of time before it all imploded. Here he was involved in an even wider cover-up, one of covering up not only the original White House connection to the Watergate break-in, but a cover-up of that cover-up. This final effort was just too much of a burden, and the Nixon presidency collapsed in August 1974.

Nixon never could publicly admit his involvement in anything illegal. Speaking of the abortive Houston Plan that would have authorized illegal break-ins for domestic counter-intelligence programs, Nixon said, Well, then to admit that we approved . . . illegal activities. That’s the problem. At another time, he admitted, I ordered that they use any means necessary, including illegal means, to accomplish this goal (May 16, 1973). He then hastily added: "The President of the United States can never admit that. Most embarrassing of all probably was the break-in of the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, an action Nixon and his aides insisted was dictated by national security considerations, when, in fact, it was designed to discredit Ellsberg (who had leaked the Pentagon Papers). Nixon knew the truth: I believe somehow I have to avoid having the President approve the break-in of a psychiatrist’s office."

Nixon’s inability to confront the truth about himself was institutional, as well as personal. He always was capable of a cool assessment of presidential power and the nature of the presidency. When Nixon expressed concern for his image, he also was aware of the president’s symbolic place in the popular mind as the government. Moral legitimacy is the chief prop for that role, and Nixon realized that his actions compromised the canons of civility that sustained such legitimacy. Nixon’s dark conversations with Colson, his knowledge of Hunt and the Plumbers, and his willingness to use the Internal Revenue Service as a weapon in his political shadow world—all amply documented here—undermined his own pride in the presidency, and what it should be. No wonder, then, that he had to keep the underside of his presidency from any public view or revelation.

Nixon had numerous opportunities to admit publicly his deep involvement in Watergate. Until the last few months, such action probably would have saved his presidency. Despite intense criticism of his administration, it is doubtful that until the summer of 1974 many Americans favored destroying it. But for Nixon to have confessed his sins would have required a degree of self-examination that he simply could not and would not do. The contradiction between his carefully nurtured public self-image of a law-and-order purist and the reality of his actions again was simply too much for him to bear. Of course there is a sense of the tragic to Watergate and Nixon’s resignation, but what is really the stuff of drama is that Richard Nixon allowed these things to happen. The tragedy is that he knew they were wrong, as he often acknowledged in these conversations; still, he could not, or would not, prevent them.

After dismissing Haldeman and Ehrlichman on April 30, 1973, under a cloud of criminal accusations, Nixon lost his last line of defense. Despite his bravado, Nixon sensed that he now was the target. As his men left or defected, the White House horrors of pre-Watergate days were exposed for all to see and judge. Nixon knew the danger, and by then realized that the assault on him had the certain outcome of either executive paralysis, at best, or defeat and humiliation, at worst. What tipped the balance between the two, of course, was the revelation of the taping system. And that makes all the more compelling the old question: why didn’t Nixon destroy the tapes?

Much has been made about the conflicting advice surrounding Nixon on this issue. Some of his lawyers insisted that it would be an obstruction of justice to destroy the tapes once their existence was known; on the other hand, John Connally and Nelson A. Rockefeller supposedly advised burning them. Haig reasoned that destroying the tapes would heighten suspicions of presidential guilt, and Nixon readily concurred, realizing that revelations of wrongdoing would be easier to control than the taint of having destroyed evidence. Pat Nixon reportedly could not understand why her husband did not destroy them. Nixon had told his daughter Tricia that the tapes contained nothing damaging, yet he might be impeached because of their content. Because he has said the latter, she wrote in her diary, knowing Daddy, the latter is the way he really feels. How odd that, for a man who adamantly insisted on controlling his papers and materials, both during his presidency and for twenty years afterward, we fail to consider Nixon’s wishes on the matter.

When the Senate Select Committee and the Special Prosecutor immediately sought access to the tapes in July 1973, the likelihood of forcing the President to reveal his private conversations seemed remote, even incomprehensible. Nixon believed that the vague, but useful, defense of executive privilege provided adequate protection against any legislative or judicial demands for the tapes. Of course, as time went on, and the prospect that the tapes contained incriminating evidence loomed larger and more significant, such demands took on increased legitimacy. But at all times, Richard Nixon had to realize the value of those tapes, and it was unlikely he would destroy them.

First, the tapes had monetary value, which could only increase in time. Nixon’s pursuit of his property interest in his public papers was dear to his heart and is a well-documented story. But he also has given us a better explanation of their real value to him: their usefulness in writing his own history of his presidency. Nixon believed that carefully selected excerpts from the tapes could exonerate him in the Watergate matter. After Nixon’s fateful meeting on March 21 with Dean, Haldeman listened to the taped conversation on several occasions. We learn in these new tapes that the former chief of staff assured Nixon how that conversation could be interpreted in a favorable light. But beyond any specific meeting, Nixon thought his tapes would insure his control of his own history. In a tantalizing passage in his memoirs, Nixon revealed the most deep-seated of his motives. The tapes, he wrote, were my best insurance against the unforeseeable future. I was prepared to believe that others, even people close to me, would turn against me just as Dean had done, and in that case the tapes would give me at least some protection.

In the end, instead, Nixon’s tapes convicted him. He told an interviewer in 1977, I brought myself down. I gave them a sword. And they stuck it in. Yet, he characteristically added, And, I guess, if I’d been in their position, I’d have done the same thing. These tapes reveal anew his tragic quality of self-destruction, and they remind us all too clearly of who and what Richard Nixon was.

PART ONE

THE PENTAGON PAPERS

AND OTHER "WHITE

HOUSE HORRORS"

JUNE 1971 – JUNE 1972

The taping system was installed in the Oval Office in February 1971, and then in other parts of the White House, and the telephone system in April. We have a few abuse of power conversations for May, but after June, they significantly increase in number.

On Sunday morning, June 13, 1971, the New York Times featured front-page coverage of Tricia Nixon’s Rose Garden wedding of the day before. The front page also prominently displayed a first installment of the Pentagon Papers, a classified 7,000-page document commissioned by former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara. Daniel Ellsberg, a disillusioned national security intellectual and official, now a prominent antiwar activist, had leaked the papers to the newspaper. The study traced the origins and progress of the Vietnam War, and threw considerable light on the difference between public knowledge of events and the government’s actual conduct of the war. By 1971, the papers offered not only historical lessons for the foreign policy and military establishments, but also political opportunities for future administrations. Melvin Laird, Nixon’s Defense Secretary, told the President that 98 percent of the documents could be declassified, but the President in a note insisted that the era of negotiations can’t succeed w/o secrecy.

The Pentagon Papers involved the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, and some Nixon aides have claimed that the President initially was inclined to let his opponents suffer embarrassment. According to this line, Henry Kissinger sparked Nixon’s anger and spurred him to various repressive actions, including a court test. Nixon, however, regarded unauthorized leaks of internal government papers as a personal affront to his notions of presidential authority; as the following conversations indicate, he did not need others to prod him into lashing out at his enemies. Leaks had upset the President quite a number of times, and have to be understood in the context of other incidents, including the Administration’s so-called tilt to Pakistan in late 1971, information about SALT negotiations, the bombing in Cambodia, and the Paris peace talks with North Vietnam. For his efforts, Ellsberg won a featured place in Nixon’s pantheon of demons, alongside such luminaries as the Kennedys and Lawrence O’Brien, as conversations over the next two years indicated.

The Pentagon Papers incident brought forth the creation of the Special Investigative Unit, more familiarly known as the Plumbers. This group engaged in numerous illegal activities for the Administration, the most notorious being the break-in at the offices of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. Nixon and his aides to the end justified the action as a national security necessity when, in truth, the action was devised to secure unfavorable information about Ellsberg.

These conversations for the year preceding the Watergate break-in also include the President’s ongoing concern with using the Internal Revenue Service for his political and personal purposes. Other conversations show the President’s involvement in various schemes to advance his re-election bid and to undermine the candidacy of others, especially Senators Edmund Muskie and Edward Kennedy. At this time, the President already is familiar with E. Howard Hunt and John Dean, persons who will have important ties to him in the future.

JUNE 17, 1971: THE PRESIDENT, HALDEMAN, EHRLICHMAN, AND KISSINGER, 5:17–6:13 P.M., OVAL OFFICE

A few days after the publication of the Pentagon Papers, Nixon discusses how toexploit the situation for his advantage. He is interested in embarrassing the Johnson Administration on the bombing halt, for example. Here, he wants a break-in atthe Brookings Institution, a centrist Washington think tank, to find classified documents that might be in the Brookings safe.

HALDEMAN: You maybe can blackmail [Lyndon B.] Johnson on this stuff [Pentagon Papers].

PRESIDENT NIXON: What?

HALDEMAN: You can blackmail Johnson on this stuff and it might be worth doing. . . . The bombing halt stuff is all in that same file or in some of the same hands. . . .

PRESIDENT NIXON: Do we have it? I’ve asked for it. You said you didn’t have it.

HALDEMAN: We can’t find it.

KISSINGER: We have nothing here, Mr. President.

PRESIDENT NIXON: Well, damnit, I asked for that because I need it.

KISSINGER: But Bob and I have been trying to put the damn thing together.

HALDEMAN: We have a basic history in constructing our own, but there is a file on it.

PRESIDENT NIXON: Where?

HALDEMAN: [Presidential aide Tom Charles] Huston swears to God there’s a file on it and it’s at Brookings [Institution, a centrist Washington think tank].

PRESIDENT NIXON: . . . Bob? Bob? Now do you remember Huston’s plan [for White House–sponsored break-ins as part of domestic counter-intelligence operations]? Implement it.

KISSINGER: . . . Now Brookings has no right to have classified documents.

PRESIDENT NIXON: . . . I want it implemented. . . . Goddamnit, get in and get those files. Blow the safe and get it.

HALDEMAN: They may very well have cleaned them by now, but this thing, you need to—

KISSINGER: I wouldn’t be surprised if Brookings had the files.

HALDEMAN: My point is Johnson knows that those files are around. He doesn’t know for sure that we don’t have them around.

JUNE 23, 1971: THE PRESIDENT AND HALDEMAN, 11:39 A.M.–12:45 P.M., OVAL OFFICE

Nixon and Colson consider infiltrating one of the peace groups. Then, the President and his Chief of Staff discuss old-fashioned, but proven, fundraisingmethods.

SEGMENT 1

HALDEMAN: One of the best breaks is if this peace group or antiwar—can be infiltrated, can be shown to be a radical revolutionary group and they’re taking stolen top secret documents and peddling them around. That shifts the whole focus of the case.

PRESIDENT NIXON: Can you get at that?

HALDEMAN: Yes, sir. We’re working this—

SEGMENT 2

PRESIDENT NIXON: Oh, I’ve got to tell you one thing. Ambassador to Brussels, that hasn’t been promised to anybody, has it?

HALDEMAN: No.

PRESIDENT NIXON: Bebe [Charles Rebozo] says Winston Guest. He’s the former ambassador to Ireland with Kennedy. He says he believes—he says—

HALDEMAN: Raymond Guest.

PRESIDENT NIXON: Raymond, Ambassador Raymond Guest will give a half a million or what do you suppose he wants to hear about that? Well, anyway, I’m sure that he’s talking about a quarter of a million at least because he gave 100,000 last time out in ’65. . . . Now, he can be the ambassador to Brussels. Find out when [John] Eisenhower leaves. He’s fine. His wife speaks French. . . . [M]y point is that anybody that wants to be an ambassador, wants to pay at least $250,000.

HALDEMAN: I think any contributor under 100,000 we shouldn’t consider for any kind of thing except just some nice—

PRESIDENT NIXON: That’s right. Like, Fred Russell who was a big contributor we know. But from now, the contributors have got to be, I think [big contributors], and I’m not going to do it with, quote, political friends and all the rest of this crap where we’ve got to give them to good old Bill. . . . Now when he [Charles Bluhdorn] goes, I want him to be bled for a quarter of million, too. He’s got that kind of money.

HALDEMAN: It ought to be more than that.

PRESIDENT NIXON: You’re talking about 100,000. That’s ridiculous. We play his games. It’ll be worth a quarter of a million to just listen to him that long.

JUNE 24, 1971: THE PRESIDENT, HALDEMAN, AND ZIEGLER, 9:38–10:09 A.M., OVAL OFFICE

In the wake of the Pentagon Papers revelations, Nixon demanded that someone coordinate a scheme for declassifying older documents, dating back to World War IIand Korea, as well as Vietnam. While he was furious about the leak of the PentagonPapers, he plans his own leak to reveal embarrassing failures or shortcomings inforeign policies under his predecessors. He wants his own Ellsberg who’s on ourside.

PRESIDENT NIXON: God, wait until these World War II things come out now we’ve got—I’ve got some more—done some more thinking on that. We’ve got to get a better team on it. . . .

HALDEMAN: That’s right.

PRESIDENT NIXON: It will have to take about twelve guys under somebody a little bit more responsible, but he’s [Tom Charles Huston] a son of a bitch. I mean, Bob, you get all this stuff. Do you realize that? We can get it all.

HALDEMAN: Yeah.

PRESIDENT NIXON: Well, we’re going to expose them. God, Pearl Harbor and the Democratic party will—they’ll have gone without a trace if we do this correctly. Who would you put in charge, Bob? . . .

HALDEMAN: That’s what I’m trying to figure because—

PRESIDENT NIXON : You’ve got Colson doing too much, but he’s the best. It’s the Colson type of man that you need. . . . It will be very good to have somebody who knew the subject. I mean, what you really need is an Ellsberg, an Ellsberg who’s on our side; in other words, an intellectual who knows the history of the times, who knows what he’s looking for.

HALDEMAN: Okay. Well, then I know who to go to.

PRESIDENT NIXON: Yeah. Who would you use?

HALDEMAN: [National Security Aide Richard] Dick Allen.

PRESIDENT NIXON: That’s the guy. Allen’s the guy. Put him in charge of it. He’s the—you’ve got it named. That’s exactly the man I want. . . . We just desperately need, I think, we need this guy, this declassification thing.

HALDEMAN: Dick Allen is the guy to do it. He’s exactly what we’re talking about. Why, all the sophistication—

PRESIDENT NIXON: I want Huston in on the team.

HALDEMAN: All right.

PRESIDENT NIXON: Because Huston will know what to look for. He knows a lot about intelligence. . . .

ZIEGLER: Allen will do a good job at this.

PRESIDENT NIXON: No. This guy is—don’t go back to World War II, this first. The first things I want to go back to—I want to go to the Cuban missile crisis and I want to go to the Bay of Pigs.

HALDEMAN: Well, those are the ones that are most likely to get lost the fastest. . . . World War II stuff we can always get.

PRESIDENT NIXON: People are being—probably burning stuff and hiding stuff as fast as they can. A lot of this stuff will be gone. The bombing halt story, incidentally, is run into the Ellsberg thing and I think it’s now time to get that out if it’s any good for us.

HALDEMAN: Okay. Well, we got, as I told you, we’ve got that except Huston says there’s three segments yet that aren’t complete, but he’s got the raw material. He can complete them. . . .

JUNE 29, 1971: THE PRESIDENT AND COLSON, 2:28–2:32 P.M., WHITE HOUSE TELEPHONE

The following two conversations reveal some of the President’s responses toDaniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, and to Nixon’s enemiesin the foreign-policy establishment.

PRESIDENT NIXON: If you can get him [Daniel Ellsberg] tied in with some communist groups, that would be good. Jay [Lovestone, ex-communist, then a prominent AFL-CIO official] thinks he is but, of course, that’s my guess that he’s in with some subversives, you know.

JUNE 30, 1971: THE PRESIDENT, MITCHELL, AND KISSINGER, 2:55–3:07 P.M., OVAL OFFICE

PRESIDENT NIXON: Well, I want to get that out. . . . Don’t worry about his [Ellsberg’s] trial. Just get everything out. Try him in the press. Try him in the press. Everything, John, that there is on the investigation get it out, leak it out. We want to destroy him in the press. Press. Is that clear?

JUNE 30, 1971: THE PRESIDENT, HALDEMAN, MITCHELL, KISSINGER, ZIEGLER, AND MELVIN LAIRD, 5:17–6:23 P.M., OVAL OFFICE

E. Howard Hunt, of later fame with the Plumbers and the Watergate break-in,was no stranger to Nixon. Here, the President wants to use Hunt’s talents forbreaking into the Brookings.

PRESIDENT NIXON: . . . They [the Brookings Institution] have lot of material. . . . I want Brookings, I want them just to break in and take it out. Do you understand?

HALDEMAN: Yeah. But you have to have somebody to do it.

PRESIDENT NIXON: That’s what I’m talking about. Don’t discuss it here. You talk to [E. Howard] Hunt. I want the break-in. Hell, they do that. You’re to break into the place, rifle the files, and bring them in.

HALDEMAN: I don’t have any problem with breaking in. It’s a Defense Department approved security—

PRESIDENT NIXON: Just go in and take it. Go in around 8:00 or 9:00 o’clock.

HALDEMAN: Make an inspection of the safe.

PRESIDENT NIXON: That’s right. You go in to inspect the safe. I mean, clean it up.

JUNE 30, 1971: THE PRESIDENT AND HALDEMAN, 7:22–7:27 P.M., WHITE HOUSE TELEPHONE

The President is also aware of another useful young man on his staff—John Dean.

PRESIDENT NIXON: . . . I guess we don’t have anybody on our staff that’s working this sort of thing except [Tom Charles] Huston; is that right?

HALDEMAN: No. [John] Dean can and his group.

PRESIDENT NIXON: Well, do they understand how we want to play the game or can you tell them?

HALDEMAN: Uh-huh.

PRESIDENT NIXON: Do they know how tough it has to be played?

HALDEMAN: Yes.

PRESIDENT NIXON: Dean, you say? . . .

JULY 1, 1971: THE PRESIDENT, HALDEMAN, AND KISSINGER, 8:45–9:52 A.M., OVAL OFFICE

Within a week after the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the President had authorized the creation of a secret, special White House investigative unit to stopsecurity leaks and to investigate other sensitive security matters. Thus, Nixoncalled into being the Plumbers, headed by Egil Krogh and David Young, and including E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. For Nixon, the Plumbers was hismeans of matching the tactics of his enemies and the deviousness of their conspiracy against him. On July 1, Colson asked Hunt in a telephone conversation,Should we go down the line to nail the guy [Daniel Ellsberg] cold? Hunt repliedaffirmatively. Earlier that day, Nixon elaborated on his other counterattacksagainst leakers, drawing on his own experience in the Alger Hiss case.

SEGMENT 2

PRESIDENT NIXON: Here’s what I have in mind and I’ve got to get [Tom Charles] Huston or somebody fast, but either Huston or somebody like Huston fast. That’s why the, you know, the Dick Allen thing. I think you’ve got to take Dick Allen on the mountaintop and see if he wants to handle this.

HALDEMAN: Who said that he didn’t?

PRESIDENT NIXON: You didn’t think he was the right guy. You wanted somebody that—John [Ehrlichman] didn’t, I think, or somebody because he’s too—

HALDEMAN: Well, Dick doesn’t think he is. . . .

PRESIDENT NIXON: . . . This is what I want. I have a project that I want somebody to take it just like I took the Hiss case, the [Elizabeth] Bentley case, and the rest. . . . And I’ll tell you what. This takes—this takes 18 hours a day. It takes devotion and dedication and loyalty and diligence such as you’ve never seen, Bob. I’ve never worked as hard in my life and I’ll never work as hard again because I don’t have the energy. But this thing is a hell of a great opportunity because here is what it is. I don’t have direct knowledge of who the Goddamn leaker is and, you see—and here’s where John will recall I don’t—probably we don’t have to tell him.

You probably don’t know what I meant when I said yesterday that we won the Hiss case in the papers. We did. I had to leak stuff all over the place. Because the Justice Department would not prosecute it. Hoover didn’t even cooperate. . . . It was won in the papers. John Mitchell doesn’t understand that sort of thing. He’s a good lawyer. It’s hard to him. John Ehrlichman will have difficulty. But what I mean is we have to develop now a program, a program for leaking out information. We’re destroying these people in the papers. That’s one side of it. Had a gap in the conspiracy.

The other side of it is the declassification. Declassification. And then leaking to or giving up to our friends the stories that they would like to have such as the Cuban [invasion?]. Do you know what I mean? Let’s have a little fun. Let me tell you what the declassification [of other administrations’ papers] in previous years that helps us. It takes the eyes off of Vietnam. It gets them thinking about the past rather than our present problems. You get the point.

HALDEMAN: Yeah. Absolutely. . . .

PRESIDENT NIXON: . . . Now, do you see what we need? I need somebody. . . . I wish you could get a personality type, oh, like [John C.] Whitaker who will work his butt off and do it honorably. I really need a son of a bitch like Huston who will work his butt off and do it dishonorably. Do you see what I mean? Who will know what he’s doing and I want to know, too. And I’ll direct him myself. I know how to play this game and we’re going to start playing it.

SEGMENT 3

PRESIDENT NIXON: When you get to Ehrlichman now, will you please get—I want you to find me a man by noon. I won’t be ready until 12:30—a recommendation of the man to work directly with me on this whole situation. Do you know what I mean? I’ve got to have—I’ve got to have one—I mean, I can’t have a high minded lawyer like John Ehrlichman or, you know, Dean or somebody like that. I want somebody just as tough as I am for a change. . . . These Goddamn lawyers, you know, all fighting around about, you know—I’ll never forget. They were all too worried about the [Charles] Manson case. I knew exactly what we were doing on Manson. You’ve got to win some things in the press.

These kids don’t understand. They have no understanding of politics. They have no understanding of public relations. John Mitchell is that way. John is always worried about is it technically correct? Do you think, for Christ sakes, that the New York Times is worried about all the legal niceties. Those sons of bitches are killing me. I mean, thank God, I leaked to the press [during the Hiss controversy]. This is what we’ve got to get—I want you to shake these (unintelligible) up around here. Now you do it. Shake them up. Get them off their Goddamn dead asses and say now that isn’t what you should be talking about. We’re up against an enemy, a conspiracy. They’re using any means. We are going to use any means. Is that clear?

Did they get the Brookings Institute raided last night? No. Get it done. I want it done. I want the Brookings Institute’s safe cleaned out and have it cleaned out in a way that it makes somebody else [responsible?].

SEGMENT 6

PRESIDENT NIXON: . . . Let me show you what happened [in the Hiss case]. I know who was against it. [Tom] Clark, who literally became a judge in the Supreme Court, Tom Clark was the attorney general. He’s a good man actually. He even told me that he was against it. If I were called before a grand jury in New York and told to give up the fucking papers to the grand jury, I [would have] refused. . . . I said I will not give up papers to the Department of Justice because they’re out to clear Hiss. I played it in the press like a mask. I leaked out the papers. I leaked everything, I mean, everything that I could. I leaked out the testimony. I had Hiss convicted before he ever got to the grand jury. And then when the grand jury got there, the Justice Department trying desperately to clear him and couldn’t do it. The grand jury indicted him and then a good Irish U.S. attorney, [Thomas] Murphy, prosecuted him.

Now, why would I do that? I did that because I knew I was fighting people who had power and who’d go—the FBI didn’t even play with it. Edgar Hoover, he didn’t play with him until after they got the indictment and you just read that story of the Hiss case and mine [in Six Crises] . . . you’ll see what I mean. It’s true. . . .

Now, how do you fight this [Ellsberg case]? You can’t fight this with gentlemanly gloves. You appear to be. Now Ehrlichman is going to go forward on this thing [declassification project] on this same basis. . . . The second point is that beyond that, though, I am taking charge of all the rest. And I am going to have it done by somebody other than Ehrlichman.

KISSINGER: You mean, like, the Cuban missile crisis?

PRESIDENT NIXON: I mean everything. I mean, we will leak—we’re going to leak out bits and pieces of—first of all, there are two different things. The conspiracy. All at once we find with regard to the conspiracy there’s going to be leaked to columnists and we’ll kill these sons of bitches. This [NSC official, first name unknown] Cooke, I want to get him killed. Let him get in the papers and deny it.

KISSINGER: Well, I, frankly, think he ought to be fired, Mr. President. Cooke admits now he gave it to Ellsberg, but he says Ellsberg was working for the Rand Corporation and, therefore—

PRESIDENT NIXON: And, therefore, it was not as legal.

[Withdrawn item. National Security.]

KISSINGER: Cooke admits that he gave the papers to Ellsberg and then they’ll be in the Washington press. . . .

PRESIDENT NIXON: . . . [W]hy does Elliot [Richardson] sit there and defend the son of a bitch.

KISSINGER: I must say, Mr. President, it’s inexcusable. He ought to be out by the end of the day today and Ellsberg—anyone who gives a paper to Ellsberg.

PRESIDENT NIXON: No. I’m not satisfied with this Cooke thing. I personally think he should be out. I will not talk to Elliot about it. Now you try to work it out any way you can. If he does not want him out, then I want you to find a way to get the story out on him. Now, do you understand what I’m talking about, Bob?

All right. Get Colson in. Get a story out and get one to a reporter who will use it. Give them the facts and we will kill him in the press. Is that clear? And I play it gloves off. Now, Goddamnit, get going on it.

JULY 1, 1971: THE PRESIDENT, HALDEMAN, COLSON, AND EHRLICHMAN, 10:28–11:49 A.M., OVAL OFFICE

On June 30, the Supreme Court ruled against the government’s attempt to enjointhe publication of the Pentagon Papers. This setback further embittered Nixon andintensified Nixon’s demands to pursue leaks and to embarrass the establishmentby exposing their secrets. He wanted, he said, somebody to be a [Joe] McCarthy or another [Bob] Dole. Perhaps remembering Nixon’s own history,Haldeman responded that a sonofabitch could make himself a Senatorovernight.

SEGMENT 1

PRESIDENT NIXON: What I need—I want a man in this White House staff who’s full time on the two things. Why don’t we just get [Tom Charles] Huston because I can’t think of anybody else?

HALDEMAN: Oh, we probably can.

PRESIDENT NIXON: Is he adequate for it?

HALDEMAN: I don’t know.

PRESIDENT NIXON: That’s the problem. . . . I know you can. You can do it but you’re only part time. Ehrlichman is half time. Colson is half time. Everybody else. I need one man directly responsible to me that can run this. I know how to—this has got to be one that’s fought in the newspapers and in the paid television.

The difficulty is that all the good lawyers around here—Dick Moore, John Ehrlichman, and, of course, Mitchell even more so—they always saying, well, we’ve got to win the court case through the court. We’re through with this sort of court case. It’s our position—I don’t want that fellow Ellsberg to be brought up until after the election. I mean, just let—convict the son of a bitch in the press. That’s the way it’s done. . . . Nobody ever reads any of this in my biographies. Go back and read the chapter on the Hiss case in Six Crises and you’ll see how it was done. It wasn’t done waiting for the Goddamn courts or the attorney general or the FBI. . . . We have got to get going here. . . .

HALDEMAN: It’s definitely a moot position and all that. Don’t you have a better chance of getting it done? If you get a creep like Huston in the woodwork or any other creep that we’d get in the woodwork here, what can he do? He can’t do what you did in the Hiss case. He can’t move it to the papers.

PRESIDENT NIXON: I